Phil 102 Personal Identity Locke and Reid

8/16/2019 Phil 102 Personal Identity Locke and Reid

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/phil-102-personal-identity-locke-and-reid 1/31

Personal Identity: Locke

This lecture will help you

understand:

• Locke’s Psychological

Continuity Approach

• Reid’s objections to Locke

– Gallant Officer argument

• Reid’s “Common Sense”

Approach

René Magritte, Not to Be

Reproduced ( La

Reproduction Interdit ),

(1937)



Psychological Continuity Approach

• Locke was probably the greatest andmost influential English philosopher.

• He was a contemporary of Descartes,and like Descartes he was a dualist.

• However, unlike Descartes he was notrationalist. He was an empiricist. Hedenied that we are born with anyknowledge. At birth, we are a tabularasa.

• An Essay Concerning HumanUnderstanding (1689)

John Locke (1632-1704)



• “Self is that conscious thinking thing—

whatever substance made up of (whether

spiritual or material, or simple or

compounded, it matters not)—which is

sensible or conscious of pleasure and pain,

capable of happiness or misery, and so

concerned for itself, as far as thatconsciousness extends” (IP 273-274).



“Man”

• “The identity of the same man consists . . . in

nothing but a participation of the same

continued life, by constantly fleeing particles

of matter, in succession vitally united to the

same organized body” (IP 271).



Prince and the Cobbler

• “For should the soul of a prince, carrying with

it the consciousness of the prince’s life, enter

and inform the body of the cobbler . . .

everyone sees that he would be the same

person with the prince, accountable only by

the prince’s actions. But who would say that it

was the same man?” (IP 273)



Man = Cobbler



Man = Cobbler

Person = Prince



Question 2:In Locke’s view,

A. a rational parrot could not be the same

person as an individual at another time.

B. a rational parrot could not be the same

human as an individual at another time.

C. a rational parrot could be the same person

as an individual at another time.D. B and C



Person

• “the substance whereof personal selfconsisted at one time may be varied at

another, without the change of personal

identity; there being no question about thesame person, though the limbs which but now

were a part of it, be cut off” (IP 273).



Accountability

• “In this personal identity is founded all the

right and justice of reward and punishment”

(IP 274).



Memory and Consciousness

• “Had I the same consciousness of that I saw

the ark and Noah’s flood, as that I saw an

overflowing of the Thames last winter, I could

no more doubt that I who write this now, that

saw the Thames overflowed last winter, and

that viewed the flood at the general deluge

was the same self . . . than that I who writesthis am the same myself now whilst I write . . .

that I was yesterday” (IP 273).



Personal Identity

• “personal identity consists: not in the identity

of substance, but, as I have said in the identity

of consciousness” (IP 274).



Loss of Memory?

“But yet possibly it will still be objected, —Suppose I wholly lose the memory of some partsof my life, beyond a possibility of retrievingthem, so that perhaps I shall never be consciousof them again; yet am I not the same personthat did those actions, had those thoughts that Ionce was conscious of, though I have now forgotthem? To which I answer, that we must here

take notice what the word I is applied to; which,in this case, is the man only” (IP 274).



Drunkenness?

• “But if it be possible for the same man to have distinctincommunicable consciousness at different times, it is pastdoubt the same man would at different times make differentpersons; which, we see, is the sense of mankind in thesolemnest declaration of their opinions, human laws not

punishing the mad man for the sober man's actions, nor thesober man for what the mad man did, — thereby makingthem two persons: which is somewhat explained by our wayof speaking in English when we say such an one is "nothimself," or is "beside himself"; in which phrases it is

insinuated, as if those who now, or at least first used them,thought that self was changed; the selfsame person was nolonger in that man” (IP 274).



Sleep?

“if the same Socrates waking and sleeping do notpartake of the same consciousness, Socrates waking

and sleeping is not the same person. And to punish

Socrates waking for what sleeping Socrates thought,

and waking Socrates was never conscious of, would

be no more of right, than to punish one twin for

what his brother-twin did, whereof he knew nothing,

because their outsides were so like, that they couldnot be distinguished; for such twins have been seen”

(IP 274)



Thomas Reid (1710-1796)

• Reid is famous for starting

what is often called the

“Commonsense” school of

philosophy and for his

defense of free will.

• For him it is commonsense

that we are the same peoplewe were yesterday, last year,

ten years ago, at birth.



Objections to Locke

• “Mr. Locke tells us, however, “that personal

identity, that is, the sameness of a rational

being, consists in consciousness alone, and, as

far as this consciousness can be extended

backwards to any past action or thought, so

far reaches to the identity of that person. So

that whatever has the consciousness ofpresent and past actions is the same person to

whom they belong” (IP 289).



Reid: Objections 1 and 2

1. “That if the same consciousness can be transferred from

one intelligent being to another, which he thinks we

cannot show to be impossible, then two or twenty

intelligent beings may be the same person” (IP 289).

2. “And if the intelligent being may lose the consciousness

of the actions done by him, which surely is possible, then

he is not the person that did those actions; so that one

intelligent being may be two or twenty different persons,

if he shall often lose the consciousness of his formeractions” (IP 289).



Locke

• “Could we suppose two distinct incommunicable

consciousnesses acting the same body, the one

constantly by day, the other by night; and, on the

other side, the same consciousness, acting byintervals, two distinct bodies: I ask, in the first case,

whether the day and the night — man would not be

two as distinct persons as Socrates and Plato? And

whether, in the second case, there would not be oneperson in two distinct bodies, as much as one man is

the same in two distinct clothings?” (IP 275)



Reid: Objection 3

• “There is another consequence of this

doctrine, which follows no less necessarily,

though Mr. Locke probably did not see it. It is,

that a man may be, and at the same time not

be, the person that did a particular action. . .”



• “Suppose a brave officer to have been flogged

when a boy at school for robbing an orchard,to have taken a standard from an enemy in his

first campaign, and to have been made a

general in advanced life; suppose, also, whichmust also be admitted as possible, that, when

he took the standard, he was conscious of

having been flogged at school, and that, when

he made a general, he was conscious of his

taking the standard, but had absolutely lost

consciousness of his flogging. . . ”



• “These things being supposed, it follows, from

Mr. Locke’s doctrine, that he who was flogged

at school is the same person who took the

standard, and that he who took the standardis the same person who was made a general.

Whence it follows, if there be any truth in

logic, that the general is the same person withhim who was flogged at school.”



• “But the general’s consciousness does not

reach back so far as his flogging; therefore

according to Mr. Locke’s doctrine, he is not the

same person who was flogged. Therefore the

general is, and at the same time is not, the

same person with him who was flogged at

school. . . .” (IP 289)• A contradiction!



A B C



Hypothetical Syllogism

• A hypothetical syllogism is a deductiveargument consisting of two premises and one

conclusion having a conditional statement for

one or both of its premises.



If A = B

and

If B = C

Then A = C



Reid Against Locke

“It may here be observed (though the observationwould have been unnecessary, if some greatphilosophers had not contradicted it), that it is notmy remembering any action of mine that makes meto be the person who did it. This remembrance

makes me to know assuredly that I did it; but I mighthave done it, though I did not remember it. Thatrelation to me, which is expressed by saying that Idid it, would be the same, though I had not the leastremembrance of it. To say that my rememberingthat I did such a thing, or, as some choose to expressit, my being conscious that I did it, makes me tohave done it, appears to me as great an absurdity asit would be to say, that my belief that the world wascreated made it to be created.” (IP 287)



Not Bodily Continuity

• “If [a person] has a leg or an arm cut off, he is

the same person as before” (IP 286).



The Subject of Acts

• “I am not thought, I am not action, I

am not feeling; I am something that

thinks and acts and suffers” (IP 286).

• Reid defines the self as the one who

remembers, who thinks, who has

consciousness, who believes, who

desires



Self

• “perfect identity” (IP 287) (i.e. it doesn’t

change)

•

“indivisible” (IP 286) (i.e., it cannot beseparated into any component parts)

• “foundation of all rights and obligations,

and of all accountableness” (IP 288).

• Is this true?

Phil 102 Personal Identity Locke and Reid

Documents

Transcript of Phil 102 Personal Identity Locke and Reid